People believe faith is worth more to people then religion.

Religion has the power to cause wars, such as the Catholic Crusades.

Throughout history, it is evident that religious movements have occasionally impeded scientific discovery; however, there is also evidence that scientific progression has been aided by religious ideology....

The only way for a man to be religious is to be so by himself.

The main character—Father Brown—in “The Eye of Apollo” combines his reasoning with his religious ideals and beliefs, or we can say his faith in God leads him to the truth of the crime....

At that time Emerson had no sufficient reason to believe that he could establish himself as the most notable that he would eventually become ~ some years later.An Emerson scholar named Alfred Riggs Ferguson has suggested that by "doffing the decent black of the pastor, he was free to choose the gown of the lecturer and teacher, of the thinker not confined within the limits of an institution or a tradition." This, later, Emerson has been described by Lawrence Buell in a prize-winning major biography, published to coincide with the two hundredth anniversary of Emerson's birth by a press affiliated with Harvard University, as having become "the leading voice of intellectual culture in the United States"!

Emerson's principled Testament of Faith of 1832, associated as it would have been with a significant loss of worldly security consequent to his resignation, surely stands in contrast to the Agnosticism and Atheism so widespread today.

Religion is important because it teaches people about themselves.

Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts."If there was "ball-park" agreement about how the Human World "ought to socially and politically operate", (thanks mainly to the Humanities), then the Sciences, not least Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology, could be more effectively brought to bear to seek to define what is technically possibly and desirable towards the attainment those aims.

(To open the lesson’s PDF file, you need free software.)

the supposed conflict between science and religion." Gould argued that if indeed the polling data was correct ~ and that 80 to 90% of Americans believe in a supreme being, and such a belief is misunderstood to be at odds with evolution ~ then "we have to keep stressing that religion is a different matter, and science is not in any sense opposed to it," otherwise "we're not going to get very far." He did not, however, consider this proposed diplomatic approach to the resolution to "the supposed conflict between science and religion" to be paramount, writing in 1997: "NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectual grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance."

We live in a Physical World which can be meaningfully investigated, and transformed, by physicists, mathematicians, chemists, biologists and engineers but we also live in a Human World which is perhaps open to being "broadly appreciated" by theologians, economists, historians, poets, philosophers and metaphysicians.

Anthropology of Religion provides me with the best of both worlds.

The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value."

Across all preindustrial civilizations, reacted in different ways to the energy surplus that domestication afforded, which usually depended on environmental variables, such as whether the arable land was bounded or whether shifting cultivation (as the soils were depleted) was feasible for relatively sedentary populations. The early states that arose where cultivation could be continual for a plot of land (through fertilizer and other methods) and were geographically bounded by barriers such as mountains, deserts, and bodies of water ( and ), were generally dominated by an elite in a steeply hierarchical society in what has been called the "exclusionary domination" model. The "corporate" model was more feasible where shifting cultivation could be practiced and geographical boundaries were minor (pre-state , the ancient culture in today's Nigeria) and less dominated by "great men" (monarchies) and more by groups that shared power (oligarchies, while constantly jockeying for it), and their control was more over labor than land. Most states arose where the arable land was both unbounded and permanent, or at least permanent. In anthropological circles, the corporate and exclusionary domination models of early civilizations often seemed to vie and interact, with one succeeding the other at times. However, whether it was monarchy or corporate oligarchy, the surplus was so small in agrarian civilizations that only a small elite and professional class could exist. Freedom was always a scarce commodity that primarily resided with the elite. While there was some variation in social organization across the world's agrarian cultures, the basics were identical for all of them, with elites and professionals riding atop the peasant class and extracting the agricultural surplus from them via a variety of carrots and sticks. Without the energy that agriculture provided, large sedentary populations were not possible, and without an agricultural surplus, civilization could not have formed. about the formation and trajectory of civilizations depended on those energy dynamics. Without those levels of energy generation, the game simply could not be played. In their most essential fundamentals, .

I earlier compared people from different epochs. That stone tool Tesla what his/her invention would lead to a half-million years later, and members of the founding group could not have comprehended . Imagine a hunter-gatherer of 10 kya being dropped into Rome in 100 CE or London in 1500 CE. History has some relevant examples. When , about the last of his people, came out of hiding in his dying world and strode into civilization, it caused a sensation. He soon died of tuberculosis, but his encounters with civilization were recorded. He attended an opera, and the popular account portrayed his rapport with the diva, but Ishi actually stared in amazement at the , as he had never before seen so many people in one place. When he saw an airplane in flight, he laughed in amazement. Imagine a hunter-gatherer of 10 kya being dropped into imperial Rome. That hunter-gatherer had probably seen dogs, but horses, cows, sheep, and the like would have been astounding, and watching a horse or ox pull a cart would have been stunning. Crops would have been an amazing sight. Imagine that hunter-gatherer at the . The building and crowd alone would have boggled his mind, even if the festivities might have been horrifically familiar. Metals and glass would have seemed magical. Writing had not yet been invented in that hunter-gatherer’s world, so even the concept would have been difficult. Imagine him trying to learn math. There were no more singing and dancing religious rituals, and no wide-open spaces to hunt a meal. Imagine that hunter-gatherer visiting a Roman bath. Hot water alone would have been surreal, while the cavorting might have been delightful. What would his reaction have been to Rome’s markets? Rome was also loud and could be hellish, so the hunter-gatherer might have longed to flee to the countryside before long, but the countryside would have little resembled the one he knew. He obviously would not have understood anything that anybody said, but they were also all members of , so he would have seen many behaviors and traits that he eventually understood. But how long would his shock have lasted? Could he have really ever adapted to Roman society (if he did not quickly end up on the arena’s stage as a novelty)? Another surprise for that hunter-gatherer would be seeing people interact who did not know each other. People were interacting with members and not trying to kill them on sight, which became standard behavior in most hunter-gatherer societies that battled over territory (their food supply). Civilized life was all made possible by the local and stable energy source that agriculture provided, which led to an epoch that changed very little until the next energy source was tapped: the hydrocarbon energy that powered the Industrial Revolution. The next chapter will survey the developments that led to that momentous event. It is the only Epochal Event with historical documentation that showed how it developed, which is easier to reconstruct than examining stones and bones.

This essay’s purpose, regarding the human journey’s epochal phases, is to show how humans achieved each Epochal Event, which was always about exploiting a new energy source, and how each event transformed the human journey. Although the civilizations of India and Southeast Asia had unique qualities and achievements, and the Buddhist religion has a great deal to commend (founded, as Christianity was, in the name of another “rebel,”) as well as other world religions, the primary preoccupation of all peoples for all time before the Industrial Revolution was avoiding starvation. Industrialized peoples seem to have partly forgotten this motivation.

Religion in the mind is not credulity & in the practice is not form.

According to the online dictionary by Merriam-Webster the definition of a religion is “the belief in a god or in a group of gods: an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods: an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group” (“Religion”)....

The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart.

Darwin's excess of generosity led him to make public my paper unaccompanied by his own much earlier & I doubt not much more complete views on the same subject, & I must again thank you for the course you have adopted, which while strictly just to both parties, is so favourable to myself.